Turns out all you need to do to give your lifestyle a healthy overhaul and reach your perfect beach body is change your mindset.

We chat to life strategies and weightloss coach Donna Still, writer of new motivational diet book Ditch the Scales, about achieving lasting and sustainable weight loss without ever weighing or measuring yourself again.

Why is it so difficult to lose weight?

It isn't, people only tell themselves that it is, so it is!

Do you really need to change your mindset to help you lose weight?

Yes, without any doubt. All the time a person is focused on depriving themselves and losing something leads to a negative focus. If a person is focused on becoming healthy and making healthy choices then it follows that weightloss is a happy side effect!

What are your diet secrets?

The secret of my success was to follow an alkalizing lifestyle. By alkalising, my body no longer needed to store fat to soak up the toxins that I had been previously poisoning myself with.

Are any celebrity endorsed diets such as the Zone or Atkins diets actually healthy options?

Any diet that encourages a person to limit their calorific value too low, or to eat too much red meat and unhealthy fat cannot be good for you in the long term.

Often diets are incredibly complicated - weighing food, counting points - is there a simple way to reach a healthy weight?

Yes, eat plenty fresh fruit and vegetables daily and cook meals yourself from scratch – that way you are in control of everything that goes into your mouth. Eat what you like, eat only when you are hungry and eat enough so that you feel full but not stuffed. I eat at least five times a day!

What do you think is to blame for the UK's obesity problem?

Many things. Lack of exercise; too many TV dinners; wide availability of fast food, the lack of home economics classes at schools for all pupils and TVs and PCs in children’s bedrooms - with far too much time spent sitting in front of them. In the UK there seem to be more 'office' roles now than manual, so we naturally become less active. For some people the cost of joining a gym may be too expensive, or it could be down to bad judgement by the individual.

How is your book different to other diet books?

Firstly my book is not a diet book. There is nothing contained within the pages that will dictate what a person should or shouldn't do. Instead, it allows each reader to look objectively at their choices so far by taking full responsibility for where they are and finding personalised solutions to their own particular lifestyle challenges. My book is a coaching tool that enables past events to be effectively dealt with to bring about emotional freedom from past baggage that had been limiting success. It has been my experience as a specialist weightloss coach that it is never about the food – there has usually been some underlying emotional issue that has never been challenged.

What’s your top healthy eating secret?

My top secret for eating healthily is to eat 'nothing that once had a face', and to eat plenty of green leafy veggies and drink lots of water.

What did you have for dinner last night?

Vegetable stir fry

Ditch The Scales is available on www.amazon.co.uk and www.ecademy-press.com for £9.99.